number two for writing the world

It is not at all the same. Back to the streets of Belém. It is known as the city of mangoes on the common tongue, and it rightfully lives to its name. They line the main street of the city, Nazaré, all the way from the grand Basilica in the center to the old Republican plaza, the name itself sounding alien in English. Walking from the cathedral and its stained glass windows, passing by cell phone vendors and the Cairo ice cream shop, it is possible every few minutes to pass a mango littered along the street, perhaps the way apples fall somewhere back home. Or at least, they used to. Just as common is to see one collected off the sidewalk bricks by a passer-by, eaten on the spot. The mangoes are smaller here, nothing like the colossuses grown in or imported to America.

It is the smells that get you the most, nothing at all like the mocha, the coffee, the fry grease, the Cinnabon of an upstate New York’s pit stop along the Taconic State Parkway. Here, a Starbucks sign tells me that by purchasing a special holiday peppermint mocha, five cents will be donated to a cause in Africa. Chairs are lined up alongside the burger stand like a conveyor belt, its members feeding and consuming during a pause in the drive. But Belém? There is a vitality to it all, a freshness and a decay. You can smell it and you can taste it. The open-aired sewers persistently remind you that the city is alive. Walking down Almirante Barroso, you take in the street vendors with their array and sales of mint gum, morning bread and cheese, roughly made fruit juices. They are part of the informal economy of the city, the kind that is starkly obvious during the unanimous daily walk to work, but vital to the daily grind.

It is noon, lunchtime, and the city indulges in açaí. On any given day, one can bet to find the frozen fruit pulp in a variety of houses throughout the city, regardless of income level. Along the Taconic road-side stop I see an advertisement exploring the berry’s elusive benefits. A superfood, it tells me. There is a false magical quality about it all. The man at the counter does not even recognize the name of the fruit when I order with its Portuguese pronunciation. Behind the counter the man pours a faint purple juice into a mix of grape, banana, and yogurt, amongst other things I am not able to distinguish. I am reminded of the five percent juice labels along most fruit juices I see in the grocery. Along Almirante Barroso, I see a real sign. It is not made of plastic, but wood, painted white. The red letters spelling out product and price have been applied in haste. There is an immediacy to it all, something one doesn't find elsewhere. Here the fruit is raw, sloppy, and thick. In the corner of the shed, the açaí berries pack full the medium sized bucket, continually sloshing in the water, seeds and bits sinking and floating, bumping into one another. The scene is not too different from a typical Brazilian bus ride from Almirante Barroso to the city’s main Praça.

Along this main road, my friends and I arrive at the window of the familiar shed, only four blocks from our office. Here they sell a bag of the fruity mush for five reals, close to three dollars. Taking a cup, the vendor scoops a host of berries from his bucket. A single açaí berry is no bigger than a dime, dark purple, with a tint of black. The man empties several scoops of the fruit into the machine, churning the berries, grinding them, removing the fruit’s pulp, spitting out the seeds into the bin below. He pours fresh water two, three times into the device. The process continues, the tart, bitter smell becoming more and more evident to our senses. We can both smell it and taste it revolving around the air of the vendor’s shack. Eventually, the thick, watery pulp begins to come out the machine. The man takes several small plastic bags and fills them each with the goo. His fingers covered in gritty purple, the vendor ties the tops into knots and hands one to Nigel, one to Lynn, and one to me. He asks if we would like tapioca too, only one real more, and we nod our heads in agreement, ruffling through our shorts pockets for a coin. We walk through the main street once more.

The purple paste is nothing like the pit-stop smoothie; it is thick, strong, bitter. It is raw, just fruit, water, and work. In the interior of the state, the heartland of the fruit, edible açaí is formed through a long process of mashing, labor, and the water of the river. There's a sense of pride and tradition in making and eating açaí that one finds here in the state of Pará. Elsewhere in Brazil, one finds families gorging on açaí with a mix of banana, honey, and granola, sometimes sweet avocado. In Pará, this would be tantamount to sacrilege. This principle applies even more strongly in the communities of Belém, who eat açaí with tapioca, sugar, farinha, or simply plain, savoring the bitter, gritty experience. My friends and I pour the mush of our bags into cups, adding spoonful after spoonful of sugar. Nigel and I use tapioca as well. We all sitting outside, taking in the heat and humidity of the afternoon Belém sun, only several degrees from the equator. It is 90 degrees Fahrenheit, normal for the city. Spoonful by spoonful the cup becomes empty, each mouthful turning our teeth a new shade of purple. It gets caught in the gums and between the teeth. The smell hits your nose, the bitterness hits your tongue, and the thickness of it all leads to a nap on the tiles outside, or in the hammock in one’s room, or a quick retreat on a couch, as I come home to find Maura my host mother doing. A few empty bowls sit in the sink.

Somehow, this transforms to that. It goes from there to here. Something is lost in the transition, translation, and production of the açaí. Ah-sigh-ee, not ah-kai. The man at the counter pronounced it the way it is here, just another health fad. A slight pour of an ingredient into some mess, not understood in the least. My Gmail account tells me it can cure cancer. Here, the fruit loses its magic, reduced now to a magical cure-all. Back in Belém, the berry is lunch and family; for many, it is what allows them to bring home other meals, textbooks, medicines, more. It is what families laugh about and enjoy together after a large afternoon fare of fried fish, fresh limes, rice, feijoada, spaghetti, and morning-made pineapple juice, leading to the communion of a household-wide late-day nap. It is something that an outsider like me learns within the first week of my time in the city, so much so that even we learn the daily route to the nearest açaí shed by heart. Family bonding and laughs over purple teeth at every afternoon transforms into solitarily consumed health drinks and weight control powder. All else seems to vanish away and I, faced with the cold and the hustle of New York, throw the half-drank fruit smoothie into the trash.